


All At Once

by tomlinseraph



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Fate & Destiny, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-01-04
Updated: 2014-03-09
Packaged: 2018-01-07 10:04:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 18,803
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1118587
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tomlinseraph/pseuds/tomlinseraph
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Louis is so desperate hes staring down death. Harry is so desperate hes staring death down with him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. i

_The fog was thick enough to hide whatever came within two feet of his vision. The cold was nipping at the end of his frozen nose and made his fingers tremble with what he mistook as anticipation. Not even the moon could be fully seen in the dark starless sky, the only light source there was seeping from behind the running water that draped over the cliff. The earth dipped off so sharply, the edge almost looked like the end of the world. The colors were so astounding, it would have taken his breath away if he weren’t already struggling to breathe the cold air that chilled his lungs. He looked at the lights again with a thoughtful smile, shoving his hands deeper in his pockets and walking along the railing as he listened to the rushing water. His boots crunched against the slippery icy floor and he thought about what things would be like if everyone could see the things that he saw, with sights beyond anyone’s wildest dreams that were calming enough to, maybe eventually, bring on world peace._

_The light was like a rainbow, as cheesy and unoriginal as that sounded, reaching out into the night to spread some kind of brightness. It was a light of hope, he decided. There were pinks and oranges that slowly blended with purples and blues and then greens and yellows blossomed, only to start the cycle again. The colors found their way not only into the night, but into the misty atmosphere that he was breathing and it looked like the air was alive and kicking. The colors were all hiding, as if shy, behind the curtain of water that fell ever so gracefully over the edge of 167 feet of absolute…nothing. Not a dull moment there was in this exact moment in time at twelve a.m. beside the Niagara Falls. The water was pounding down into the ground beneath it and he leaned off the icy rail that was there to see just how far the water fell. Except the fog, or mist, he guessed, was in the way and it make it looked endless. Sighing, he himself felt endless, like with the blink of an eye he could find himself in the deepest corners of Earth, space, and time, but then he thought that maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to freeze time right then and there if it meant he got to look at that view every day for eternity._

_Its moments like these he lived for, moments in time that chilled his spine and ignited his soul. Its moments like these that made him feel infinite and hopeful and more than willing to get himself lost in the worlds in his dreams, get lost in the sights like the one before him. But then he thought again of the lights that reminded him of his own surging hope and he shook his head, telling himself that what he was searching for could only be found in reality. He remembered the thousands of memories and flashing smiles that gave him butterflies, he remembered those lingering glances and lustful stares and he knew, deep down in his gut, that he couldn’t ever let something like that go, not even for the most breathtaking view in the entire universe… That thought made him chuckle, because he knew there was nothing more breathtaking than those beautiful blue eyes._

_Standing infinitely in the middle of the clearing there, he stared down the falling curtain of water one last time and swore to himself, one day he would come back. He would come back with the one he was meant to be with and they’d stare the water fall down together, with their hands clasped tightly as one against the cold and they would–_

“Harry! Aren’t you listening?” His mother frowned from the driver’s seat.  
“Ugh, sorry mum,” he shook his head. “I was just day dreaming.”  
“You do that a lot.” She sighed, her eyebrows fixed in concern.  
Harry only shrugged and went back to staring back out the window of the car, trying to concentrate on his dream again; he wanted to go back.  
“It’s like you’re another world away.” She said again.  
 _You don’t know the half of it_. He thought.

•••

The first time it happened, Harry was four. Four years old seems impossible to comprehend the complex idea of traveling through time and space, but to him, it was just a dream. It was a sweet dream that took him to the park down his street and away from being stuck in time-out; which at the time was probably one of the more horrific nightmares in his short life, besides getting lost in the store. It felt so real to him, too real. He pictured himself climbing the little latter to the slide time after time after time and each time he was sure he felt the cool metal bars under his chubby fingers. He heard himself laugh and felt his curls get pushed back in the breeze each time he went down its spiraled form, and yet, the blaring timer of the microwave snapped him out of it and the next thing he knew he was staring at the corner his mother placed him in and his time-out was over.

It took years for Harry to understand what it was, years for him to figure out that it wasn’t something that happened to everyone, and years for him to control it; with his eyes open even. Each time Harry was faced with something he didn’t like, he would use his mind to his advantage to get away. Like the time he had to move because of his parents divorce, the whole car ride there, Harry’s mind was at the arcade on the other side of town. Or the time he accidently locked himself in the supply closet at school all throughout lunch, Harry was in the tree house of his dreams. Each time he dreamt of another place he was always alone, but he didn’t mind that; in fact he preferred it. But all that hiding from reality turned him into quite the outcast and it came to the point where Harry preferred his dreams over his friends.  
At first he thought it was his imagination, he learned that bit from watching SpongeBob, but one day while he was at the beach instead of silent reading in class, he saw himself with his family on the shore. It startled Harry more than anything and he wasn’t sure what to do, he didn’t imagine them on the beach and he couldn’t make them go away. His first instinct was to just stand there silently and see what would happen, but then he stared right at himself. Harry’s own eyes were staring right at him, except they weren’t his eyes, and it was more like they were staring right through him. His duplicate didn’t even notice him really, just glanced his way. It was as if Harry wasn’t really there, not even his family seemed to notice that there was a second Harry already at the beach. He sat himself in the sand right in front of where his family was settled and decided to just stick around and see what would happen, he heard his other self talking to his cousin, Mark.

_“Harry, get me a water from over there.” Mark pointed._   
_“Get it yourself.” He huffed._   
_“But it’s my birthday!” He argued._   
_“You turned thirteen last week.” Harry rolled his eyes._

Harry stared at his other self and his other cousin curiously. Mark’s thirteenth birthday was months ago and they didn’t end up going to the beach to celebrate because it had rained. Confused, Harry retreated in his mind and ended up sitting in his boring desk at his boring school once again, wondering what had happened. If it was really his own imagination, he should be able to control everything and yet the more he thought about it, the more he realized he couldn’t really imagine any of it up. He couldn’t make himself fly when he wanted or create another him when he wanted, he had as much control in his dreams as he did in real life; he could only choose where to go.  
He also thought it was strange his family didn’t see him and the more he thought about it, he realized that it wasn’t just his family, it was as if no one could see him. Determined, Harry went out and investigated it, standing in front of strangers and making faces at the children in his dreams. Each time though, they were unfazed. How could this be? Everything was real to Harry; he could see everything and even touch it. Curious, he set out again and stood in the kitchens of strangers and picked things up to rearrange them, giggling when the people were confused as to why one of their cups were upside down in the microwave. He noticed another pattern while a woman was looking for her whisk, she couldn’t see it while he had it in his hands, but when he set it down again it was visible to her. That eliminated the idea that maybe he was just invisible, no, things disappeared with him when he had them; unfortunately this meant no ghost pranks with floating objects, but that was alright.

It wasn’t until Harry was fourteen and channel surfing at two in the morning that he found some documentary discussing the Multiverse Theory.

“It’s like a tree.” He said. “Think of the entire thing as all the space, time, and matter that ever existed put together. So each leaf is a moment in time of a parallel universe, or even a moment in time of our own universe, past or future. Each parallel universe is just like ours, but with different decisions made and different circumstances played out and they all exist, all at once.”  
Harry’s interest was piqued immediately.  
“Imagine being able to travel to almost the exact same world, there would be a replica of everything you know, including yourself, and yet there would be little differences here and there or maybe even big differences, who knows? The only way we would be able to reach those parallel universes is if we were somehow able to transport our atoms through space and reassemble them in another world, somehow reaching past that boundary of another universe.”

He was up on his feet in that instant, running towards the closet where he knew they kept the camcorder. Locking himself in his room, Harry set everything up so that he was recording himself while another world away. He went to the fields of some unknown place where it was warm and the sun was beating down on him, because quite frankly, it was winter and he was cold. He only stayed a few minutes to marvel at the beautiful flowers and enormous trees before finding his way back to his room. Although the disappointment churned his gut when he played the video back and saw that he was still there, as real as ever, with his eyes partially opened.  
Harry came to the conclusion that if it wasn’t physical, then it had to be mental transportation. How else could it all be explained? If it all felt so real and looked the exact same yet it was slightly different, then that had to be it. He started searching for himself in the parallel worlds; started finding certain points in time where he wondered what would have happened if it all went differently. His first stop was if his parents hadn’t gotten divorced. It wasn’t the best, they were all barely making by as a family and his parents argued often, but other than that Harry wondered if it all would have been worth it. He stayed there for at least an hour, but really back home it was only a few minutes. He also watched himself, he looked just about the same age, but he wasn’t sure. The other Harry said he was going to go out and Harry followed him. Well, he didn’t really follow him, he just jumped a few minutes ahead and found himself again at a park, curious as to what he was doing.

_He was pacing in front of the park bench with his hands shoved down in his pockets, glancing at his watch every now and then. It was obvious he was waiting for something, more like someone, but the question still stayed–who? Another few minutes passed by and he was sitting on the bench now with his face in his hands, worried. The crunch of footsteps against the crisp grass was the only thing that got his attention, and when he lifted his head to see who it was, his smile bloomed across his face. The other boy was smiling just as broad and he jogged a little just to get to the bench quicker. Harry jumped to his feet to hug the other boy and they just stood there in each other’s embrace, then, they kissed–_

Wait, they kissed? Harry blinked a couple times and lost his concentration, his dream was slipping and he found himself at the courtyard during lunch. He was gay? Was that what happened because his parents never got divorced? Was that the parallel universe where he was gay? He shook his head a bit, telling himself it’s just a parallel universe and that there was bound to be one where he was gay, maybe even a few more. He tried not to think about it.

Harry kept exploring. He decided to go to these different worlds where he was older, taking a peek at what kind of future he might have had. He found some version of his thirty-year-old self and saw he was a stay at home dad with two kids. He loved it really; he thought it was a great future. Harry cooked and his kids were beautiful as ever and then his spouse came home and– He looked exactly like an older version of that boy his other self met at the park. Harry panicked a little and left that dream to find another.

He was a Uni student now and he shared a dorm with a friendly bloke. He seemed to be having a good time with his friends at one of the football games. Harry nodded to himself, he liked this, and maybe he would go to Uni now. The game had ended and they had won, he saw his older self get all excited and run down the bleachers and onto the field all while shouting in victory. He ran into the arms of one of the players and he congratulated him, calling him babe and kissing him on the mouth. Horrified, Harry got a look at his face and, sure enough, it was that same bloke he had seen.

Harry was mortified with himself and searched and searched all the other different worlds with a different him and every single time, that same boy was there and they were either kissing or holding hands or just together. Harry didn’t even stick around if he saw his face, he just left and tried to get rid of that boy. He went to worlds where he was orphaned with a different family, where he was born in different countries, where he was with different hair colored, even where he was straight and married to a women, that boy was still in his life. No matter where he looked, that boy always showed up at one point or another, his face was everywhere. It got to the point Harry stuck with places instead of trying to find another version of his self, he was just freaked out. He tried to get that boy out of his mind, but he always crept back and the funny thing is that Harry had never seen him before in his life, he’s sure of that.  
But in the end, Harry wasn’t able to resist it anymore, he went back to that first time he saw him, he went back to where his parents weren’t divorced and his other self went out to the park to meet that mysterious boy; just to get a good look. Harry stood himself in between the mystery boy and his other self, he stood there and looked straight into his eyes and–

He knew what it was to be breathless.

Because those eyes– _god_ those eyes–just seemed to hold back the earth’s oceans behind the thinnest layer of gleaming glass and all that infinite feeling that came with rushing water was in those eyes. There was passion, there was motion and emotion, and there was bright vibrant hope in those eyes when they looked at Harry; well, the other Harry, but the point still stood. They shined the sun’s rays and they gleamed like the moons light. Those eyes made Harry’s perspective change forever. He was no longer scared of this reappearing boy, in fact he was drawn to him. It wasn’t weird anymore and it wasn’t coincidence that Harry saw him in every other version of himself. No, he shouldn’t feel like he was being stalked, he shouldn’t feel creeped out by it, he should be grateful. Grateful because this was f a t e. This was fate screaming out at him, the universe was slapping him in the face; taunting him even. Harry decided right then and there that he didn’t like girls nor boys. No, he only liked those beautiful blue eyes.

•••

Harry was grateful for his…gift. It let him appreciate the universe as it was meant to. It made Harry very humble and happy. He had no worries in reality, because if something upset him, he would just run away to another world and find a happy place; he had at least a hundred. It was as simple as going out for a jog in the town in the real world, but in his mind he was running through a rainforest on a cool morning.

  
“Honestly, honey, you’ve got to stop drifting off like that.”  
“Why?”  
She pressed her lips in a tight line, “It’s like you’re scared of reality. You say you’re dreaming but you don’t do anything about those dreams, Harry. What do you even want to do with your life? You can’t stay with me forever.”  
“I’ll do all that growing up soon enough. I thought you’d want me to stay your little boy.” Harry teased.  
“You’ll always be my little boy,” she smiled. “But a mother likes to see her kids grow up too.”  
He sighed, “I’m just…looking for something…specific. But I have to wait for it.”  
“Looking for what? What’ve you got to wait for?”  
Harry paused, “A dream come true.”


	2. ii

_“There are about 360 thousand births a day and 152 thousand deaths a day. That’s a net of 208 thousand more people each day than the last. With 365 days that’s about 76 million more people every year and only two hundred thousand less on a leap year. There are seven billion people on earth already, so at that rate, we’ll reach one trillion in only twelve thousand more years. That sounds like a lot but in the reality of things that’s only a small blip in the entirety of time. So that’s 150 life times, 150 generations. That’s too many people on the earth, we’ll be crowded or we’ll start dying even faster from lack of resource._

_“So about two hundred thousand people dying every day. A majority of them are by murders and suicides and sicknesses, not old age.  And yet there are technicians worrying about the latest iPod. With the rate of today’s technology humans should be making it to the stars in about fourteen thousand years, if revolutionary discoveries keep getting made every two to three years or so and are actually put to use. But it would be too late by then because we would have hit our carrying capacity already. Since facilities are more concerned over cloning animals and testing chemicals already known to man and making cars with newer energy fuels, we’ll never advance fast enough. And because of the Dependency Theory, I strongly believe we’ll still have children dying of starvation or malaria by the time humans do get past the moon._

_“But if we focus more on things like curing first AIDS and then educating the children in the lower developed countries, the death rates could decrease by almost a fourth and so would the birthrate because women would be educated. If we just do that, we’ll stabilize the population worldwide and with more young people in sciences and engineering, we could not only stabilize the population so that we don’t have to search for more planets to inhabit, but we could put a man on mars far before we would ever need to. We could make discoveries far beyond anyone imagined!”_

_He paused. “I think if we were to just take these steps, then the world could be a better place.”_

_He finished and stood proudly in front of the class room of about twenty other seven-year-olds his age, they stared at him with blank faces, completely lost. The assignment was to, in the twenty minutes given, think of something that could make the world a better place. Some kids talked about recycling, or loving thy neighbor, and others swore hugs would bring humanity together. But in those twenty minutes one little boy with clear blue eyes went over and beyond._

_“Freak!” One boy in the back called out._

_“You’re crazy.” A girl turned up her nose at him._

_“He’s making stuff up, he’s stupid.”_

_“Children!” Their teacher scolded. It got quiet and she looked sympathetically at her odd student, who was now pouting at his feet. “Thank you, dear. Just head back to your seat, please.”_

_He dragged his feet all the way there, the other children got an applause from the rest of the class and the teacher would praise them, but all he got was called names, it wasn’t fair._

His eyes blinked open and lay there calmly, staring at the ceiling. That wasn’t the first time Louis had dreams–nightmares– of his childhood, but he wondered why that one suddenly resurfaced. When he could remember every other thing about his childhood, literally, why dream of something as petty as that? His other nightmares were of beatings and the rejection he still got, that was a good day in comparison. Was his mind finally giving him a break? He doubted it.

•••

His mind hadn’t given him a break at any point in his life, he swears he was only two days old and already and putting what he could do to the test. He was estimating how many miles away the sun was before he could even talk, which at the time he guessed about ninety million and the correct answer, after looking it up, was only three million miles more. He couldn’t even talk and yet he remembers numbers just clicking in his mind, he was two years old, that was 24 months, about 104 weeks, and 730 days and he counted every single hour too. It wasn’t just numbers though, his mother would read him stories and the words just made sense as she pointed her finger and she read them, he figured the pattern out quickly and could already form sentences in his head with the letters. Speech came the same way, no one had to really encourage him to say anything, he remembers just calling out to his mother one day by her name and no one could really believe it.

He forced himself to practice routinely how to walk and he learned just under one year old. One year old and he could already walk, talk, and read. At two years old, he forced himself to learn how to use the toilet and asked his mother questions to learn. He also sat himself and learned how to play nursery rhymes by ear on the piano, and he loved it. At only three years old, he could speak rather fluently and he even attempted to compose his own song, which he dedicated to his mother on Valentine’s Day. He also learned how to make himself a number of meals, often getting up at odd hours to make himself a turkey sandwich, he was smart and would use the chairs to boost himself up. Still at three, he taught himself multiplication and division after his mother showed him addition and subtraction. He would keep multiplying numbers higher and higher until he actually challenged himself. At four years old, he taught himself French with one of the old French-English dictionaries his mother had lying around the house. He also took an interest in the History Channel and figured out how to change the channel when his mother wasn’t looking because she insisted he was still too young, but he didn’t think so. At five, he got into the knack of doing puzzles, he begged his mother for 1,000 piece puzzles and Sudoku booklets and he would always beat her to the crossword puzzle in the newspaper. He also got into chapter books and read more than most students would want to. He could sit there for hours reading if they let him.

His mother was always worried, he was growing up much too fast for her liking. She thought he should be playing with cars and counting to one hundred, but instead he’s learning how to assemble cars and multiplying by the hundreds. Mostly he was annoying, patronizing her when she tried to tell him about Santa and the Tooth Fairy, he knew that was all myth, _he_ told _her_ to grow up. He wouldn’t buy it when she said cows could jump over the moon or cracked eggs could be put back together again. He corrected her when she said Christmas was Jesus’ birthday and when she insisted babies come from storks. He was too young to be as independent as he thought he could be. Even when she tried to look into his interests and do math problems together, he pushed her away and told her he could handle it. She sent him to doctors and therapists and they all told her there was nothing wrong with him other than he had an abnormally superior intellect, but that wasn’t bad or treatable, in fact they called it a gift. Still, she worried about him all the time.

Still at age five, when he started school, he was fidgety and squeamish, he hated being around so many kids his age that had to think twice about how to spell their name or still got stuck in the middle of the alphabet. He was more of a teacher aid and she always called on him for answers she knew no one else would know. She let him read stories to the other kids and let him help grade her papers during nap time; because Louis insisted he was much too good for that. He had to keep his mind running during the day because his brain just didn’t want to stop working, he had to be doing something, had to be challenging himself. During math time she would send him off to the classes of the older kids and he actually learned a few things. On days he couldn’t do that, she would give him challenges like fractions and decimals and things he had never seen before. He read the teachers books and he wrote stories of historical significance for her. He was personally proud of writing about the summarization of the 47 Ronin, his teacher appreciated the cultural difference. He didn’t have any friends at all and would spend Lunch and Recess with the teachers, talking about what he learned today or listening to one of them talk about anything else Louis didn’t already know.

The next year of school came around and he was seven now, but things were different. His old teacher left the school and he had a new one this year, she was very different. She treated Louis like any other kid, any other kid that still wasn’t fluent in reading and still picked his nose. He didn’t expect this. She was rather old and grumpy and she just wouldn’t put up with any of his shit, no matter how much he pleaded that he was bored and better than this. Sometimes Louis got so annoying that she would send him off to another teacher and he would go learn things with the older kids, but for the most part he still had to practice cursive and complete the grammar work sheets, he hated every bit of it. The other teachers still let him in the teachers’ lounge, but his older meaner teacher ignored him to the best of her ability. He didn’t understand her attitude until it was the day he finally got the guts to ask her why she doesn’t let him reach his true potential in class.

“Louis, dear, you’ve got all this knowledge but when are you going to realize that you’re learning too fast and it’s making things pointless for you quicker?”

“Excuse me?” Louis asked her.

“Joy, leave the kid be.” Another teacher commented.

“No,” Louis told him, “What do you mean?” He asked her.

She looked at him with her sad weary eyes that reflected every drop of bloodshed and sunshine she’s ever seen. “You’re smart kid, you figure it out yourself. You know so much and– doesn’t that just make you miserable?”

Louis frowned, “Why should it?”

She chuckled darkly, “You don’t know about the world of magic and cartoons, you don’t know what it’s like to look up at the stars and wonder. All you know is facts and facts and more facts about this godforsaken hell and–

“Joy!” The same teacher snapped.

Louis looked at him curiously.

But she continued. “–And all you know is wars and holocausts and black holes and supernova’s and–“

“ _Joy._ ” He repeated.

“–And it should scare. You. To _death_.”

“It’s fine!” Louis told the teacher that was intervening before he could open his mouth again. He looked back to his own teacher, “But why?”

“Because just like all those other people that already died, you are just an annoying spec throughout time and you won’t matter.”

“Alright that’s it. Louis, go outside, go play.” The other teacher told him, shoving Louis out of the teachers’ lounge.

Confused, Louis was thrown out and he walked over to where the other kids at recess were, it was his first time out there really. All he could think about was what his teacher said to him and how right she was. She’s right in that no matter how much Louis learns, he won’t matter because eventually everything will die, all humans will die, and no matter what discoveries he makes or what awards he wins or how much he learns or what he’s known for, it’ll all die away some day too. Everything he knows will disappear some day with the carbon in the stars and the nitrogen in the asteroids. Anything that he becomes will just wear away and everything that he makes will be forgotten. Even if he figures out how to travel through time or makes a spaceship good enough to take all of mankind to another fertile planet, even if he makes alien contact or cures cancer it won’t matter because–

Because it just won’t. Mankind will die and all of its memories will too. That means everything he’s learned is pointless and everything he’s done to make himself better than everyone else doesn’t matter because in the end, there’s an end to everything.

Louis was seven years old and already considering suicide.

It made sense in his mind, if nothing mattered then he didn’t matter. It made things worse that he was so smart because no one shared his pain, they all still thought that money and looks mattered and their spouses mattered. Everyone was happy but him, why shouldn’t he just leave?

Seven to about ten years old, Louis sulked and stopped learning. He spend his days like any other boy, playing video games and watching mindless TV, his mother wasn’t sure if she should relax or if she should worry more. He went out and found friends, doing mischief because that’s the only thing Louis got a kick out of other than learning. He grew up fast, physically. Eleven to about fourteen he invested his time in material objects, making sure he looked good and he had the best brands of everything. He kissed a few girls and broke a few hearts and even started drinking the wine his mother left in the fridge. Fourteen to eighteen was all downhill. It was all parties and meaningless fucks and drunken nights. Louis forgot he had a family and instead went out with anything that breathed, making himself think he was having a good time, but really, he was miserable. He still maintained his grades at straight A’s to keep his mother happy, but the other kids didn’t like that. They grew jealous at the fact he could fuck around, barely try, and still make it out on top with his intelligence. He was beaten plenty of times, he was still teased and harassed for his big brain, but he said he didn’t matter so neither did the pain or his feelings. He found his group of friends to screw around with who didn’t care about his grades. He was so brilliant at keeping both sides that he gave his valedictorian speech stoned and drunk.

He broke into homes and told his mother he was sorry after just going out to smoke with his friends. He shot heroine a few times and dropped out of college eventually after only the first semester of a full ride scholarship, making money by working lame jobs at Toys ᴙ Us and bartending. His mother kicked him out around that time too and he shrugged it off, he let go of any emotional attachment he ever had and convinced himself that not even his feelings or the feelings of others mattered. He swung by around his mother’s house every so often, sober, but he told himself he didn’t care, he was just being a decent son because– well because she had to put up with him for seventeen years, so he could at least repay the favor.

Suicide was still lingering throughout his entire life; because sometimes he still caught himself thinking too much. Like if each step he took was a third of a meter long, and every minute he took about 80 steps, and the entire country of the United Kingdom was only about 480 kilometers wide, then he could easily walk from one side to the other in six thousand minutes, or one hundred hours, or a little over four days. Or he could just keep walking straight into the ocean and let himself drown.

He dragged on like this until he was twenty-four and popping the happy pills the therapist his mom made him go to prescribed him. His nightmares happened every night. Every night he flashed through his greatest fears: rejection, helplessness, depression, etc. When he closed his eyes, the only thing he could see was the hundreds of eyes that would stare at him for his intelligence, the hundreds of fists that would pound in his face, and the hundreds of times his mother looked at him with dreaded worry in her eyes.

•••

Louis blinks his eyes and he thinks about everything again. He thinks of it all at once, since day one, since his first breath up until the one he just took, and he thinks… Why doesn’t he just end it now? It won’t be anything…heroic, there won’t be a long philosophical suicide note that explained everything, and he won’t even tell anyone. He’ll dress as if it were any other Saturday in May and walk into the city as if it were any other day to do errands. He won’t shake with nervousness or anticipation; he won’t feel sorry for himself or cry. He won’t stress about it or back out, he’ll just…be. He’ll just, calmly as ever, walk to the Lauderdale Tower in London and claim he is visiting a friend or give any other bullshit excuse just to get at the top, and then he’d stare down those four hundred and some meters and just…take a step. Take a moment to take it all in and then step off the building and off the face of earth. It sounded so easy and so possible and Louis’ stomach actually started kicking from excitement like when he was first learning how the world was created when he was still naive. Smiling, he sat up out of bed and looked in the mirror across the room and he nodded to himself, daring himself to make today, finally be the day.


	3. iii

_His beanie fought to stay on his head and he had to keep tugging on it so it wouldn’t get lost in the wind as he raced down the street of busy people that yelled at him to get off the sidewalk. Instinctively, his bright eyes shined with mischief and he let out a teasing laugh that dared anyone to stop him from having this much fun. Leaning to the left, he darted his skateboard away from the parked car and tugged on his beanie again, looking back and laughing at his barely-missed obstacle._

_“C’mon, Louis!” His friends laughed at him and they took the opportunity to pass him, stomping their Vans™ down only for an instant to push off again. He dodged an open door and a baby stroller before he could even try to catch up, he was losing and he knew it. Still determined, he pushed himself to go faster. There was a shortcut he thought might work,_ fuck it, _he thought, just before making a sharp right into the closest intersection. They were all racing to the closest pizza place from their dorm and the last one there had to pay the bill, and quite frankly, he didn’t have any money on him._

 _He was headed down what was a new street to him and he actually slowed down to see what there was. A nice little burger restaurant was there and he told himself to swing by here some time. There was a little Mexican place right by it, but then after that was a small shop that caught his attention._ Healthy, Happy, Horny Herbs _it was called. Forgetting completely about his race, he wound his way around the people of the city and stopped right in front of the store. He was only outside and could already hear_ Step Rockets _playing throughout the speakers of the store. Smirking, he took his skateboard in hand and walked into the little establishment._

_Just walking in, he felt a heavy cloud of what smelled like incense and some kind of earthy sent, it made him want to relax almost immediately. There was a rack against the wall with dozens of pamphlets, all of them about a different herb or spice that was each supposed to solve a different problem. The shop looked weird, the lights looked orange and not very bright, there were things like dream catchers hanging from the ceiling and palm woven peace signs all over the room. There were old license plates on the walls and a few lava lamps put up for decoration. He kept walking, the longer wall held an assortment of pouches that had small packets of different kinds of herbs, there were even pictures in front of each . There were things he knew like rose petals, ginger, peppermint and maybe he could have guessed red clover, but they also had things like neem, stinging nettle, cumin, and saffron. There were also flowers there like lavender and dandelion; he couldn’t imagine why someone would want to smoke those though._

_There were also pipes and bongs, they were colorful and some even decorated with flowers and designs. There were recipe books too that would revolve around a specific herb for anyone that didn’t want to vaporize whatever they got. The only other things there were a few vinyl records and things like sugar and coffee that were from World Trade Centers. There were plenty of flyers tacked on a bulletin board asking for volunteers at animal shelters and donations for starving kids and even a few flyers advertising music festivals. He took a moment to take it all in, smirking at how it all reeked of modernized hippies._

_There was a door way in the back that he had missed, but looking at it now he saw it was draped close with various stringed beads hanging there in the way. He didn’t see anyone there at the store but guessed there should have been someone on the other side._

_“Hello?”_

_There was movement in the back and he stood there and waited for whoever was about to emerge. When they finally did, after a lot more shuffling, the first thing he saw was feet behind the curtain, they were bare except for a couple tattooed lines of lyrics. They took a step out and parted the curtain of beads. Checking the lad out from the bottom up, he took in the other boys ripped shorts that stopped just above the knobby knees on his thin lanky legs. His t-shirt, also ripped, had the trade mark_ Rolling Stones _logo, the sleeves and collar were cut and there were at least five small holes scattered across his chest, it was so faded he felt like there was a veil blocking his vision when he looked at it and had the urge to squint his eyes. There was a dorky name tag that read HARRY but his badass tattoos were visible and Louis loved the way they looked against his ivory skin. There were a series of cute charms hung around his neck that adorned his prominent collar bones. Then finally, there came a sloppy grin with a cute button nose and lively green eyes. His hair looked like a brown lions main, it was swept back in this elegant arch, thanks to the help of a scarf imitating the American flag. Louis couldn’t help but smirk at him._

_“Hello.” He said in a very calm voice, “How can I help you?” His voice was so innocent and delicate and gingerly that Louis gripped his skateboard tighter._

_Louis stared at him a while longer, stared at his broad shoulders and slender waist and tight buttoned jean shorts. He felt like being mischievous again. Harry himself was licking his lips from watching Louis. He had on tight black sinful jeans that showed off every curve god gave that boy. His shirt wasn’t too tight but his shape was still being sculpted and his devilish smirk was enough to make Harry’s palms sweat. His feathery hair was tucked away in a beanie but his eyes were shining and looked ready for anything._

_Louis caught on to his staring and smiled brightly in growing confidence, “Hi, Hello. I was just um,” he acted as if hesitant, “I was looking for a bong.” He said in a suddenly blunt tone, pointing at the ones on display._

_“A vaporizer?”  He asked._

_Louis shrugged, “Same thing, right?”_

_Harry nodded nervously, “Well, there’s different kinds for different reasons. What is it you were going to be using it for?”_

_“Weed.” He said bluntly again._

_Harry blushed, flustered, “I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that.”_

_“Why? As if you’ve never passed a joint. You run a fucking herb shop for christ’s sake.”_

_He fidgeted and shifted weight on his bare feet, “My job has nothing to do with it.”_

_“Whatever you say.” Louis rolled his eyes, setting his skateboard on the cashier counter._

_“Um, sir–“ He started._

_“Call me Louis.” He said, pretending to look at the informational packets they had there. “What’s your name?” Louis asked, even though he already knew the answer._

_“Harry.” He said, “Now, Louis, please don’t put your skateboard on the desk.”_

_“Why not? It’s not hurting anything.”_

_“Yes but–“_

_“How much for a bong?” Louis asked him, walking closer to Harry._

_“I–it depends on which you get but they’ll range from about–“ Harry suddenly stopped because Louis was standing incredibly close. “Um–” Damn him and his nerves._

_“Oh damn.” Louis turned his back to Harry and placed his hands on his bum, patting himself and making sure Harry was looking, which he was, rather wide-eyed, “It seems as though I left my wallet back at my flat.” His voice was just a perfect mix of concern and carelessness. Harry opened his mouth to say something else but Louis cut him off. “Tell you what. I’ll take you out to dinner tonight in exchange for my prize.” He reached an arm across Harry, getting unnecessarily close and grabbing one of the smaller bongs._

_“Um, Louis, that’s not–“_

_“Oh, here’s my number, you’ll need that.”_

_“Louis–“ He tried again._

_“What time do you get off?”_

_Harry was quiet for a very long moment and he wasn’t sure what to say._

_“Well come on then! I’m actually supposed to be somewhere else, time is money and all that.” He rushed._

_Harry sighed deeply, part of him wanted to scream he got off at six but the other part wanted to scream at Louis for being so–so immature._

_“Tell you what.” Louis said, walking behind the desk that was there and digging through drawers after setting the bong down on the counter._

_“You shouldn’t be behind there–“_

_“Here it is!” Louis said triumphantly, holding up a thin binder that read SCHEDUALS. He opened it up to find that Harry worked here with another college guy and a pretty girl; they would all sign in and out when their shifts started and ended. “According to this, you get off at six. I’ll come by here at seven so you can clean yourself up and put on a shirt where I can’t see one of your nipples.” He smiled, taking the bong and his skateboard as he started heading out._

_“Louis!” Harry protested._

_“See ya!” Louis blew a cheeky kiss and dropped his skateboard, “Dress casual and be yourself!” Was the last thing he called before pushing off and continuing down the sidewalk and to the pizza place where he knew his friends were already eating._

_“Where were ya?” They asked him, already in the middle of the meal. “Where’d you get that from?” They asked immediately after, regarding to the bong in his hands._

_Louis took two slices of pizza in one hand and got on his skateboard again to leave, “It’s rude to ask questions.” He said before leaving, barely managing to balance himself through the door.  He went all the way to his dorm, finishing a pizza on the way and barely managing to keep his beanie on straight. Louis managed to get to his dorm in one piece with a mouthful of pizza and tossed his flat mate the bong, telling him to take it and use it at the party later tonight. Toeing off his shoes, Louis showered and got ready for his date._

_Harry, at the moment, was still standing in his exact same spot, star stuck by Louis and still slightly agitated about what had happened. He had a little over an hour until his shift ended then he could get ready, as much as he didn’t want to admit to himself he was excited, he was still eager to go out tonight with such a lively character._

_Jumping forward in time, Louis turned the corner and automatically landed his gaze to the tall curly lad who had gotten rid of the scarf in his hair and traded his t-shirt from the garbage to a tight button-up that looked like it was about to pop the buttons. His cologne was fancy, something French, Louis guessed, whatever, he thought it was better than him looking like he smelled like Doritos. Louis himself had picked a tighter t-shirt and chose a more comfortable pair of black jeans, though just as tight, and he greeted him with a smile._

_“Oh my god you’re here.” Louis chuckled, “Tomlinson.” He said._

_“What?”_

_“What might your last name be?”_

_“Oh, ugh, Styles.”_

_“Well you sure do live up to the name, nice boots.” Louis winked. Harry’s smile grew just a little._

_“You came, so that must mean you’re not taken or busy, lucky me! Are you ready for a romantic carpet ride?” Louis asked, bowing like a prince would to his princess and insisting Harry take the lead._

_“Sounds lovely.” Harry smiled again, blushing just a little._

_“Well too bad.” Louis said. “How do burgers and then a college party sound?”_

_Harry shrugged, still smiling, “That sounds fine too.”_

_Louis shook his head, “Wow, you must be really desperate to keep going with this, am I a rebound? Or am I revenge for someone? A dare perhaps? Because I’m pathetic I’ll assure you.”_

_“Well.” Harry said as he kept walking, following Louis, “I have no choice really, this is supposed to make up for the item you stole.”_

_“Riiight.” Louis said, faking guilty._

_“But you also made quite the first impression, so,” Harry shrugged, “I’m curious as to where this’ll lead.”_

_Louis nodded, “I like the way you think Styles! I’m curious too.” He smiled at Harry who smiled back and the moment seemed to last millenniums._

_They went to an old burger joint that also served chicken wings and they shared a little bit of everything, there was a game on the TV and they entertained themselves with that as they also learned about each other. Louis was only a year ahead of Harry, both were in college, though studying completely different things. Their music taste wasn’t too off nor was their taste in video games and TV shows. They talked about their hobbies and their friends and what they liked to do in their free time. Harry was in some up-and-coming indie band and Louis shrugged, saying he was on his skateboard more than on the ground. They hit it off so well it felt like they were old friends catching up, just talking over a beer._

_It didn’t feel like a first date, no, those were scary. This was college, this was casual. This was young careless love._

_Louis paid for everything, as promised, and after assuring Harry still wanted to go to the party, they headed off in that direction. It was barely nine pm and the night was still young and they were ready to have some real fun. Once there, Louis introduced him to a few of his friends, they were full and turned down food, but they did open a few beers and casually talked in one corner by themselves. Harry knew a few people and introduced Louis to them, just as Louis had done. For the most part though, they were alone together, Louis did most of the flirting and Harry just blushed a lot. A few more cans of beer turned into daring each other to take shorts. They were both rather tipsy but acting tipsier than they really were, and it became all hands with them for the rest of the night. They would tug on each other’s belt loops for attention and touch each other’s face for emphasis. Harry squeezed Louis’ knee and Louis patted Harry’s thigh, and they’d giggle but refuse to look at each other and they left their hands there most of the time. Time went by and Louis excused himself, Harry let go of his knee._

_Louis came back with a familiar looking glass object that was now filled with liquid. Harrys eyes grew with realization. It was the vaporizer Louis had stolen and it was being used. Louis pulled out his lighter and flicked it on, holding it up to the end of the lip and sticking his nose and mouth in the opening. It bubbled for a little and Louis took in a sharp breath. He stopped and pulled back, holding it in his lungs for a few seconds before slowly letting out the toxic air. The small crowd around them cheered and it got passed down. When it finally came to Harry, he looked at Louis nervously._

_“Take-a-hit!” He chanted. “Take-a-hit!” a few more people joined, then they all cheered, “Take-a-hit!”_

_Louis held it and lit it for him, and Harry laughed nervously again before taking a two-second breath and then coughing it out right after pulling away. It was weak but the crowd still cheered and Louis patted Harry’s back in congratulations._

_“Hope I didn’t put too much pressure on you.” Louis whispered in his ear intently._

_Harry shook his head, “I’ve always wanted to try it.”_

_Louis entrusted his bong with his friends and invited Harry to dance, now that they were loosened up. They ended up grinding against each other, Louis happily taking front and making sure to torture Harry as best he could. Harry fought back though, and used his large hands to his advantage, touching every part of Louis in a teasing graze of his finger tips, especially his nipples. But Louis won that round and eventually Harry spun him around and got real close to Louis._

_“Explain to me why haven’t you kissed me yet?” He said in a deep voice, digging his nails into Louis’ curved hips._

_Louis smiled wickedly, “Can’t expect me to make every move, Styles.”_

_Harry smiled and blushed just before leaning down to kiss Louis harshly, they went at it for a while, snogging intently in the middle of the dance floor. Harry was the first to pull back and drag Louis into the nearest bathroom. They made out heavily a bit longer, smacking their lips and sucking each other’s neck to see who could leave the darker love bite. Their moans got louder and turned into profanities. Eventually after Louis groped Harry in just the right place, Harry got needy and tugged down his zipper to let himself breathe, his prick standing proud and tall. Louis jerked him off and in the middle of Harry’s moaning fit, he figured out how to work his muscles and began doing the same to Louis. They touched each other with desperate hands and trembling fingers and they continued to snog until they came all over the other in a panting fit._

_Louis’ lips let go of a whimpering hiss, only to attach themselves back to Harry’s neck at the nape of his ear and purred out, “This isn’t the answer.”_

_“Wh–what?”_

_“This isn’t the answer.”_

“This isn’t the answer.”

Harry jerked awake into reality and looked over at his mother.

“This is _not_ the answer.” She sighed.

Harry was mortified; he was half hard and, mentally, not all there. “What isn’t the answer?” He asked her.

She looked over at him with sad eyes. “I’m talking about that boy up there!” She snapped. “God Harry, you never listen to a thing I say.” She kept going on about how his head it too far up in the clouds but Harry was busy.

He was busy looking out the window to see what boy she was talking about. Traffic had stopped and there were police cars and helicopters around the Lauderdale Tower. “What’s going on?” He asked her.

She was still mad but she answered him, “There’s a young boy up there threatening to kill himself, he’s been up there ‘bout half an hour and still the police can’t get him down. It’s not the answer, poor lad.”

Harry looked up curiously at the figure standing on the very edge of the tower.

“Poor lads name is Louis Tomlinson, he’s only twenty-four, the reporters say.” She sighed.

Harry froze in his seat and felt his face drain of any color in his cheeks. He recalled what his mother said and jumped back thirty minutes in his mind and stood himself on top of the Lauderdale Tower and looked at the person standing there with weak knees and shaking fingers and he went around to get a look at the lads face and–

His heart stopped.


	4. iv

Coincidences don’t just happen. Reoccurrences aren’t just for kicks. Irony isn’t just for amusement. Serendipity isn’t just luck. Things don’t just happen for the sake of happening.

June 22nd is an interesting date in history.

In 1633, it was the day Galileo Galilei’s idea of the earth revolving around the sun began to be recognized by the church.

In 1772, it was the day England outlawed slavery, causing a chain reaction of nations abolishing it.

In 1812, it was the day Napoleon launched an attack into mid-western Russia, killing more than half his army from the cold and deserted frontier and began the end of the French Revolution, ending absolute monarchies and creating a constitution.

In 1933, it was the day Hitler outlawed all other political parties, except Nazi’s.

In 1941, it was the day the Soviet Union got involved with WWII, one of the largest countries with the largest army at the time.

These are some of the most revolutionary dates in time throughout the entirety of history; all on June 22nd. It cannot just be a coincidence. These are certain shifts in time that, if not had happened, the most life-changing events wouldn’t have occurred.

Coincidences don’t just happen. People don’t just get lucky.

 At least they shouldn’t.

•••

W hen Harry was just nine years old, his dog, Scooby, died and they buried him in the backyard with a cross sticking out of his grave. They held a funeral for him and laid a couple rocks on top of the dirt mound so that it looked neat. That same night the alarms went off in his house in the middle of the night because someone was in their backyard. They got away but the only difference was the rocks thrown off the dog grave and the messy dirt pile thrown on top.

When Louis was just nine years old, he took a knife from the kitchen and locked himself in his closet and calculated just how deep and how long a cut into his arteries had to be for it to kill him within minutes. Before he could do anything though, his mother screamed from the kitchen because she had accidently cut her finger from cutting tomatoes and Louis ran to her aid.

When Harry was just ten years old, he remembers a stranger buying him a candy bar at a small candy shop, telling him that it was bad luck to eat a candy bar and turn left at a stop sign, otherwise he would grow worms in his stomach. Harry thought it was the strangest thing, but he liked a little whimsy in his life and turned right, avoiding the kidnapper that was waiting behind the right corner. He took another little boy that day.

When Louis was just ten years old, his mother had just found out she was pregnant with yet another child, and he promised himself right then and there that he would stick around long enough to help her take care of her kids, Louis was the only supportive man in her life.

When Harry was just thirteen years old, he started keeping a journal. It wasn’t a daily diary sort of thing, but he did occasionally write down whatever his head just couldn’t seem to get rid of.

When Louis was just thirteen years old, he started going out to the junk yard just a few blocks down from his house and he built a club house for himself to wallow in pity with garbage just like him, he went there often.

When Harry was just fifteen, his mom almost got in a serious accident and she swore it was because of some stranger that stopped her from turning the corner, just to ask the time.

When Louis was just fifteen, he made another lame attempt to kill himself now that his mother found a good man, but when he was just about to step off the ladder so the noose could choke him, his younger sister screamed from the street so Louis ran to see what was wrong, and apparently some stranger popped up out of nowhere and slapped her across the face, then disappeared.

Harry felt like he was really lucky when it came to bad situations. Louis felt like he wasn’t lucky enough with so many failed attempts at suicide.

•••

_The person standing there with weak knees and shaking fingers had a face so familiar it made Harry’s whole world stop. Harry couldn’t even take a proper breath before they started talking._

_”Don’t talk, just listen.” He stood there twitching and shaking, as if he were about to combust, “I know it looks confusing but you have to trust me. It’s worth it I promise,_ he’s _worth it. Everything you need to know and any questions you have will be two feet under Scooby, do everything it tells you to do in the red ink. Do you understand? Red. Ink. I’m giving you thirty minutes.” He paused to take a deep breath. “Don’t talk, just listen. I know it looks confusing but you have to trust me. It’s worth it I promise,_ he’s _worth it…” He started repeating himself._

“Ahh!” Harry’s mother screamed, jerking Harry awake again in the process and he let go of a loud gasp himself. He was just in the car, he was just in traffic.

“What! What?” He cried, exasperated and confused.

There were tears in her eyes and she pointed up at the Lauderdale Tower, there was no one standing there anymore.

“Did he jump?” Harry asked.

She nodded her head slowly.

 Harry’s stomach did a flip. “Oh my god.”

It felt like hours of silence before traffic finally started moving again, and having forgotten their destination, they went back home.

 

The 10 o’clock news was on and everyone was talking about how no body was found after Louis Tomlinson, age 24, jumped. The footage replayed, he fell with his face hidden in his hands and at the very last moment when he should have hit the pavement, he was gone. The whole way down his body seemed to shake with tremors and shocks.

 

Louis was confused. He was dumbfounded even, he sat there on the couch and played the recording back over and over again.

“It’s just funny, innit?” His mother called later that day to tell him. “Same name and age! You don’t see that every day.”

“You don’t.” Louis mumbled. He had gotten dressed in his favorite outfit and went out to eat at his favorite restaurant before practically skipping into town, ready to do the deed. He was only two blocks down from the Lauderdale Tower when police sirens and news vans started surrounding the building, Louis could see it from a distance. A quick eavesdrop of gossip and radio news told him someone had already beaten him to his plan. Louis lulled it over a while before deciding that maybe today just wasn’t his day; he didn’t feel like doing it anymore. Turning sharply on his heel, Louis walked back home calculating the statistics of all the different types of suicides happening each day. He came to the conclusion that hanging was the most common with a bullet to the head coming in second.

Louis probably could have thrown himself in front of one of the bypassing cars and that would have done just as good as jumping off the building. He considered it but…it just didn’t feel right. Something in his gut was telling him that he shouldn’t, which was odd because just this morning his gut was telling him to do it. He felt off and it bothered him, he usually knew what was happening at all times but this time…he felt out of the loop. He felt like there was something greater than him that knew what was happening to the world around him, and yet he was still clueless. Louis distracted himself by reciting all the named stars of the galaxy in backwards alphabetical order.

Now back at home, Louis hung up the phone with his mother and stood in his living room with a loss as to what to do. How could a body just disappear? Louis played the video over and over and found better resolutions of the tape and did all he could, he checked to see if it was simply video graphics, recreating the scene with different animations and templates. Louis went through blogs of witnesses; he searched family records of his second Louis Tomlinson, although he didn’t seem to exist. The odds of that being his actual identity were astounding, the odds that he lived in London and planned to kill himself the same day Louis did were even more breath-taking. Louis pulled his hair out coming up with equations and using dimensional analysis to try and figure out what happened. There wasn’t enough information though, there were too many unrealistic odds that he could put to the test. He watched the video a couple hundred more times before coming to the conclusion at five am the next morning that this had to be defying the laws of the universe, of physics and reality. Someone was messing with things.

Fed up with everything, Louis went out and bought a pack of cigarettes from the shop just around the corner from his flat. He took his skateboard and lit one up while going to one of his favorite places since he was a boy. Taking shortcuts through alley ways and winding his way around to his old neighborhood, Louis finally stopped at his destination: his childhood getaway. His skateboard slowed down to a stop in front of the chain linked fence and he picked it up with his free hand to push away the hole it had on the side of the fence. One step into the old junkyard and Louis felt relaxed immediately. He walked carefully across to where he built his hide out years ago and ducked down inside the creaky wooden walls and dusty curtain door. He dropped his skateboard to the ground and sat down on the stacked pile of tires and chucked his cigarette pack onto the desk made of old car parts, an ironing board, and some duck tape.

Louis froze. No one came back here anymore, junk is brought here and taken, but his place has always remained untouched because it lies wedged between a pile of old, unrecyclable mattresses, and oily car parts beyond repair, too pollutant to be put anywhere else. So, Louis never expected anyone to come around here. Except there was a neat little notebook there with leather binding and a doodled on cover sitting on his desk with a note tucked between the worn laces tied around the whole thing. It read:
    
    
    _read pencil only, please_ ♥

•••

It was two in the morning now, Harry was laying awake thinking about today’s events. He had had enough and jumped out of bed to run to the backyard, hoping his mother wouldn’t wake up. He ran over to the shed in the back yard and pulled out their old shovel. Then, he ran all the way across the yard where a tombstone lay. He started digging, forgetting to pace himself and just pushing as much as he could. He hit the large box he was expecting, but he tossed it aside and kept digging about two feet deeper until he hit a smaller box. He sat there for a second, taking a deep breath as he stared in awe. Slowly, making sure he was careful, he pulled it out and quickly shoved the dirt back in. He patted the bigger box that held his dog and placed it carefully inside before shoving the rest of the dirt on top and carelessly leaving everything but the second box. His heart was racing and he wasn’t sure what to make of everything, but this wasn’t something you could just ignore.

Harry crept back in his house and ran to his room, locking the door behind him. There was a trail of dirt but he ignored it and set the box down on his bed, pausing to imagine what could be inside. When he opened it, ever so gently, it turned out to be what looked like his journal, except it was thinker with more papers stuck in it and a big pink neon book mark sticking out to save the page. Harry didn’t even pick it up, he ducked under his bed and dug around for _his_ journal, which was still in its place.

No one had stolen it.

He flipped through the pages of what had been under his bed and it seemed like his real journal, but then, what was in the box?

Harry was only getting more and more confused, but he was curious; oh, so, curious. In fact, his curiosity and amazement was the only thing that kept him from creeping back into a dark corner of his mind, because it was all a little too frustrating and hard to grasp. He decided to just head straight into whatever was going on here and he opened what looked like his journal to the page that had been marked. He opened it to find the pages marked with red chicken scratch that looked an awful lot like his handwriting, if he were in a rush. Harry glanced at the door once more before turning the room light off and switching on the lamp by his bed to begin to read.

 

_Harry_

_I sat here trying to think of the most creative and effective way to get you to believe me but then it came to me as simple as ever._

_Louis_

_We’re doing this for Louis. Remember that, he means so much you, and to me too. But then I also remembered that you’re me and you’re going to want to jump into anything anyone suggests. It might not be fun but…it’s worth it, and you trust me, with a face like mine, you kind of have to, ha!_

_I have to be quick with this because I’m going to have to be somewhere else in a few ticks. I’m going to start from what I hope is the beginning._

_Well first things first, Harry, you_ can _actually travel to other parallel worlds,_ physically _. You have to have lots of energy, lots of will, and most of all, lots of tissues nearby because you’re nose will start bleeding, but you’ll be fine._

_You need to concentrate,_ hard. _But! Don’t go trying it just yet (see I read your mind because we are still the same person). But, when you do first try it, try something you’ve already done, somewhere you’ve already gone. I’m not going to give you specifics because just leaving you this is going against the laws of the universe. But then again, you yourself are a living, breathing, big bloody broken law of the universe, Harry, you shouldn’t exist._

_Anyway, once you’ve tried it a few times, there are a couple chores you need to get out of the way. First, let’s start with 7:30pm on the 8 th of November, 2009. The day your mother was supposed to die. You need to go bundled up in scarf’s and cover your face and just as she’s about to turn into Palm Lane, jump in her way and kindly ask the time, without causing any suspicion. You need to understand that she needs to be saved._

_You still probably have lots of questions, but you need to follow my instructions carefully, stop reading just after this paragraph, whether you believe it or not, continuing to read when you’re not supposed to could change time entirely, you aren’t supposed to know about the future, but this needs to be done. Do this, and when it’s been done, go to the old junkyard on the other side of town, on Mount Clinton and South Elmer’s Road. Go find the piles of car parts and mattresses and go into the hidden curtain there, it’s got stripes, you can’t miss it. Leave it there telling the next person to read only what’s in pencil. I know you might not want to let the journal go, but if I’ve convinced you well enough, you’ll do it. You’ll find the book again soon, but its someone else’s turn for right now. You CANNOT stay to meet the person that is supposed to be there, leave the book and don’t turn back. It has to be today, the same day you saw me jump from the building, and it has to be before 5am. There’s a much bigger force we’re dealing with here, two actually, and if you aren’t careful, you could put both your life, and Louis’ life in danger._

_Sign,_

_Your future self_

Harry got chills down his spine and he looked down at his wrist watch to see the glowing numbers shining back at him.

_2:48am 22 June, 2014_

He had better hurry.


	5. v

_­It was a place where the grass was a bright vibrant yellow with orange tipped dew, and the trunks of the trees were a dark, teal, blue. They sky was always white, grey, when twilight came. And seldom did the lilac clouds bring blueberry rain._

_It was a place where the leaves were a soft gentle pink, and their surface slicked with sweet syrup. In the sky was a moon with an elegant glow that shined like all the queens of Europe. The mountains were orange and they danced with the wind, whose gusts turned white with frost. And the lakes were a murky green that if entered, quickly, unpleasantly, lost._

_The flowers were blossomed with black at the center, fading out toward white tipped petals. Their red vines were curled and thriving throughout the bed of fuchsia nettles. The birds sang in tune like soft piano keys and they joined the drummed hum noise of the bees. They played like an orchestra welcoming a king, and as lovely as it is, it’s better in the spring._

_Harry took a moment to stand in the sunshine field and breathed in a long breath. He took it all in and closed his eyes, imagining everything behind his black eye lids and picturing it all. He crouched down next to one of the blossoms with the white tipped petals and opened his eyes to stare at it intensely. He touched it, felt the soft petals and the thicker vine it was attached to. The more he concentrated on it, the more he realized he wasn’t really touching it, this was just his mind. He had learned to become self aware and he was getting stronger than his mind now, being able to tell apart what was mentally there and what was physically there._

_He was determined to make this try finally be the try that would let him reach past that boundary of another universe. It had been four days of trying and he concentrated hard. His concentration intensified and he reached out once more to the little flower. Something was happening._

_He could feel his fingers shaking, they felt like they burned, but he took that as a good thing. It felt like his heart was in his hand and that was the only place his blood was beating, everything else wasn’t there. He traced the curve of the petal and the touch stung his finger. Harry ignored the pain and felt the petal between his index finger and his thumb and the pain was numbing but he held on as long as he could before the shaking in his fingers twitched with a snap and he tore the petal off._

Things went black, but when Harry finally opened his eyes, he was in his bed staring at the ceiling. His upper lip felt wet and he dabbed his finger in it to see that it was blood. Harry reached for the tissues that were under the bed, he was thankful for leaving himself the note. He walked over to the bath room and switched the light on to look at himself in the mirror. It was midnight and he looked tired, he cranked towards the sky but he held his hand in front of his eyes to look at his finger for the longest time just to watch it curiously.

He needed practice.

 

•••

_Louis,_

_You know everything there is to know about everything, and deep, deep down you know it._

_You are so stupid, you know that? Like you’re smart, you’re freaky smart, but you are the stupidest human being I have ever had to deal with, and that’s saying a lot coming from me._

_Ok, so let me help you see things. You have this incredible power that no one else has, you’re intellect is superior and you see things that no one else sees, you know things that no one else knows, there is NO ONE out there like you, nobody. Those gut feelings you have? It’s all real._

_Remember when we were little and there were things you didn’t know about, but just hearing them, you had a pretty damn clear idea of what it was? Remember the first time you read about the big bang theory and you had this gut feeling that T H I S was it? This was the start of our universe. Remember when you had no idea why the sky was blue or why the grass was green, but you guessed it had to do with the energy produced and it turned out you were right? Remember all those bloody times you could make any guess about anything, and you turned out to be right?_

_How do you not find that significant? You’re life is boring because there’s no surprise, Louis, it’s not that your quick with learning or you’re good with memorization, it’s that all the information of the universe has been crammed into that thick skull of yours. You know everything there is to know about everything, any gut feeling you have, is pure fact. There’s nothing for you to learn really, it’s all in your head, past, present, and future, you know about all the other worlds and parallel universes, you’ve just suppressed it so much you’ve fogged up your mind. That’s why you couldn’t stop learning when you were little, that’s why you still feel like you can’t stop making your brain work, because there’s too much information in there, it keeps your gears running._

_The only reason you haven’t dismissed this idea is because now that it’s been put in your head, you’re getting that gut feeling again._

_So the multiverse theory is factual, you’ve known now for a while. The past present and future are all happening in this instant, all at once, and you can feel it in your veins, cant you? You can feel history and significance and turning points going on in time with every heart beat. It’s the reason you think you’re so insignificant, I know you can feel it, I still can._

_You can’t tell the future or anything, it’s still uncertain and it can still be altered, but you have a pretty clear picture on what it’s about._

_So what now? What do you do with this? Well I’ll tell you what, you get of your big fat arse and you fucking do something with that you little punk. I swear to fucking god I want to slap you, slap myself._

_How can you know so much about how unique you are and yet never question why you are the way you are? It’s because you aren’t supposed to be, Louis. You aren’t supposed to exist, no one is meant to know the secrets of the universe, and you are in danger._

_In danger from who? Not important, but they are scary, two of the biggest  forces that have been enemies since the beginning of time have come to a common ground just to get after you, you should be scared. But I know you’re not, you still don’t care. That’s why this is being done, you are more important than you think, you will not just die along with everything else, you will make the biggest difference anyone in the entire universe has ever made, and deep down you feel that too, I know._

_Now that I have your attention, you’ve got to do a couple things, you’ve got to stop fucking around for one thing and then you’ve got to create your own traveling pod that will take you to other universes, you can do it in your sleep, I know you can._

_But I also know you won’t do it so easily, you’ll sit there in your little piece of shit hide out and try and figure everything out but this is where I have the upper hand, ha._

_Do what I fucking tell you and things can go along smoothly. But I know you won’t._

_Sign,_

_Your future self._

_p.s. If you’re as scared as I’ve tried to make you, you won’t read any further and you’ll leave the notebook right where it was._

Louis **screamed**.

Harry stayed too long. He was crouched behind the chain linked fence, waiting for a reaction. He made sure Louis hadn’t seen him, but also made sure Harry couldn’t see _him_. He did that successfully, watching only the silhouette move through the dark and into the junkyard. Harry was tempted, he was tempted to jump around in his mind and take a peek at who ever this was, but he listened to the warning and decided against it. He did, however, stay just a little longer so that he could hear the frustrated stranger scream. Harry panicked and ran away after that, now seriously afraid as to what might happen if he stayed too long. He had no idea who it was.

“Come out! Whoever you are, come out, _now_.” Louis called. He threw the notebook to the floor and felt like tearing something apart. He threw an old pan at a pile of crushed aluminum cans and screamed again. “Who the fuck do you think you are?” He didn’t believe any of this. Someone had to be playing a joke on him, it was all too much. Louis paced around and kicked anything that was in his way. This had to be a joke. “There’s no such thing! This can’t be happening! This isn’t possible!”

But that’s when Louis’ gut sank down to the pit of his stomach, because the truth was…it was quite possible.

But it wasn’t fair.

“Who are you?” He called out again, hoping someone would respond. When no one did, Louis threw what looked like a deteriorated dictionary at some old car parts and found relief in the loud clanking it made.

It wasn’t fair, this stranger who claimed to be his future self just stripped away everything Louis had been trying to repress since he was born. He stripped away Louis’ guard and left his insecurities and fears in broad day light it felt, and made him feel alone. Louis didn’t want to be alone, he didn’t want to be a genius; he wanted to be like any other reckless kid his age, because that’s what he saw himself as. How dare this person make him feel isolated and trapped.

Louis had never seen that notebook in his life, he saw other handwriting that wasn’t his, and he figured at least he wasn’t alone in this.

 

After sleeping in all afternoon, Harry ate lunch with his mother and made sure he had enough energy. It took another week and a half but Harry was certain he was up for the challenge, his mother’s life depended on it and he took that very seriously. He had practiced in other realms and did little things here and there, forcing body parts here and there through the boundary and having to rest long periods of time when he came to. It was July now, and no where hear cold, but he remembers what the letter said and he dug around his closet to find thick clothes and plenty of scarf’s. He locked himself in his bathroom and just stared at himself in the mirror for a second.

“What if you’re just mad?” He asks his reflection. He looks ridiculous bundled up the way he is, he feels ridiculous.

Sighing, Harry accepted the fact that one, he was dying to finish the first task so he could find out more as to what the hell this was, and two, he didn’t want to leave his mother in danger. Harry sat on the edge of the bath tub and took a few deep breaths before closing his eyes and trying to find the exact date and time. It wasn’t hard. If he knows the person and has met them and interacted with them in reality, it’s quite easy to find them in any other world. This is frustrating when all he wants to do is find Louis and he can’t.

_Harry stands at the corner and everything is fine, he feels fine, things look normal, no one sees him. He’s in front of a launderette and the sidewalk is slicked with fresh rainwater. There’s no one out. He sighs again and sucks up his jittery nerves because he knows its going to hurt. A white car pulls up and stops in front of a red light just along the curb, he sees his mother, she looks tired. Harry looks around the corner, in about ten seconds, the light is supposed to turn green and a drunk driver is going to smash into the side of his mother’s car._

_Harry looks down at his watch and its still 7:29pm._

_Harry concentrates on first his feet, those don’t seem to hurt as much._

_His knees lock and they sting, and he wonders if his mother were to look to her right, if she would only see a pair of shins._

_His things quiver and he tells himself his waist and chest should be easy, but he’s biting his lip so hard but it doesn’t compare to the concentration hes putting into this._

_What if he cant do it?_

_Harry thinks harder, pushing his arms through._

_Now its just his head, he needs to try harder. Harry’s breathing heavily._

_His face stings, like a thousand needles are on the inside and they are pushing out through his every pore._

_It…it doesn’t hurt._

_Harry doesn’t think, he knows hes all the way through and throws himself in front of the car, making himself trip on the way down. His mother had started inching the car forward but when she say Harry’s figure, she stepped on the breaks quickly._

_Harry kept his hand pressed on the hood of the car and he could feel it. Not like other times when he was feeling it in his mind, but he could_ feel _it._

_She lowered the window, “Can I help you?”_

_Just then the other car came out of no where and excelarated forward with a loud_ vroom _and hid the street light that was just opposite him. Harrys mother gasped loudly and Harry took the opportunity to cover his face better with the scarf’s, he actually felt cold now, really cold._

_He cleared his throat, “Time, Ma’am?”_

_She jumped to look at him, as if she forgot he was there, she was white as a sheet but still looked at the radio that gave the time with glowing numbers, “Half seven.” She said in an uneven tone._

_Harry cleared his throat again to make his voice deeper, “Thank you. Drive safe.” He took a stumbling couple of steps back, he felt okay a few moments ago but the effect was starting to take over again and His arms jerked violently at the shoulders. He could feel the muscles in his legs twitch and Harry decided that was enough._

Harry gasped out loud and felt like he was falling. He was relieved to find out he just fell back into the bath tub. His head banged against the back and the white tile surface and it feels like a bullet just went through his skull and settled in the center of his brain. It hurt to move his muscles and he was hot and panting from the stinging pain he felt all over. Climbing out of the tub, Harry grimaced and waddled back in to his room while stripping off the layers he put himself in. He shimmied out of his jeans but his arms were too tired to lift his shirt up over his head so he left it on along with his underwear. Harry doesn’t remember when, but he drifted off to sleep.

 

Its December, and its only a few hours until Louis turns twenty-five. Its been months and Louis has done everything in his power to try and forget what happened that night. He left the book as was told, but not because they told him to, but because he wanted to forget about it all. And he had, for the most part. For example right now he was too pissed to even know where he was, so it wasn’t on his mind. Louis’ arm was sore from the needles  he had taken, he doesn’t remember how much heroine he shot but he thinks it might be a new record, in the last twenty-four hours at least. The thought makes his heart sink. He’s in his last moments of being twenty-four himself.

Its too much really, hes too miserable. Its taken more and more distractions, more intoxications, more wasted time to keep himself from thinking too much. The amount of people dying each day, the amount of violence he knew was happening, the jerk his heart gave when he looked at the moon, soon it wouldn’t be there, and only he knew how and why. His mind searches for something else to do, most of his friends went to spend the holidays with their families, Louis had one, but he liked to pretend he didn’t. He sighed heavily and formed the only thing that made sense to him in that moment.

He was going to go drown himself in the Thames river; it wasn’t far. He was going to do it. He was.

It was as simple as stuffing his pockets with rocks and hugging a cinder block like it was the only thing that mattered to him.

Louis struggled to get up, but when he did, he left whatever curb he was slouched against and decided to just walk there, it wasn’t too far, and it would be worth it. He was humming his favorite song with a spring in his step, telling himself if he doesn’t find anything to pull his weight down, then maybe he’ll just swim down, down, down, until his breath is running out and he’s too far down to make it to the surface in time.

That sound like a good idea.

He wasn’t that far from the river, and he started getting excited, he smiled even. He ran, like a child to an ice cream truck, to the edge of the river. The side he came from was where tourists usually viewed it, there were dead trees and dried grass and the edge was right there, he could dip his toe into it. Louis snickered and decided to be even bolder and started to strip himself naked before stepping into the chilling water.

He was down to only his underwear and he was shivering. Louis was about to slip them off but then suddenly someone emerged from the water gasping dramatically. Louis squawked back in fear, startled and scared. Someone climbed out of the water and they were shivering too. The stranger sized Louis up and gave him a good, wet, slap across the face.


	6. vi

H A R R Y ‘ S limbs were exhausted. The only other time he can remember his muscles aching this bad was when he went hiking with one of his neighbors that insisted jogging seven kilometers uphill wasn’t hard at all. He felt tired, not just in pain, like his muscles were too over worked, like they had been stretched out too far. In nothing but his shirt and boxers, Harry began to doze off, even if it was the middle of the day. His eyes closed and he was just about to get pushed over the brink of sleep when there was a loud _zap!_ that came from outside the window of his room. Harry moaned and debated if whether or not it was worth getting up to go see what it was. His mind was foggy though and he ignored it to dig his face deeper into the pillow. But then he heard his window being slid open. Harry didn’t move.

“Oh, good, he’s asleep.” He heard a voice say. Sore and tired, Harry stiffly turned around to see what had just happened.

“What the hell is–“ Harry stopped talking. He couldn’t believe it. He really, seriously, couldn’t believe it. “It’s _you_.” He whispered.

The stranger stood there awkwardly with Harry’s journal in his hands. “It’s me!” He mimicked in a lighter tone.

Harry realized he was in nothing but his boxers and he felt embarrassed all of a sudden and he grabbed a pillow to cover his lap. He didn’t even care that this person had just invaded his bedroom through the window, Harry didn’t care how he managed to find him or get there. None of that mattered because Harry had seen more bazaar things in his life, so seeing his better half jump into his life like this was nothing really. Well…nothing except everything. _Louis_ was right there in front of him! In the flesh! Harry didn’t know what to do.

“Hi–hi, hello.” He squawked. “What…what are you doing here?” Right after that, Harry clamped a hand over his mouth, “I mean–I mean, that’s not to say I don’t want you here, I mean–um. You sort of just broke into m–my house, sort of, and maybe I should want you out? And I’m in my boxers and–and I don’t know what I’m saying, but like…hi?” Harry couldn’t breathe right. He had spent a majority of his life looking for this boy, who he was sure was the love of his life, and he was standing in front of him unexpectedly. He’s the one who had found Harry, if felt bazaar because Harry was sure Louis had no idea he existed. Unless he had the same power and was looking for Harry just as frantically, the thought had just barely crossed Harry’s mind.

Louis was smirking and he gently set the journal on Harry’s dresser. “Read only what’s in blue crayon. Its marked with the sticky note, as it always is.” He shrugged. Harry still didn’t say anything, but his eyes were wide with awe, he still couldn’t fathom it. Louis fidgeted uncomfortably under his gaze. “Alright, well that’s it then.” He started for the window.

“No!” Harry said, jumping up and forgetting the pillow. “You can’t leave now! I just–I just met you! I um…do you–do you know who I am?”

Louis was standing outside now, watching Harry curiously through the open window. “You’re Harry.”

“Yes, yes!” He exclaimed. “And you’re L–Louis, right? I don’t know sometimes its William.”

“What?”

“Nothing!” Harry blabbered. “The point is…won’t you stay? You–you got the journal too, right? Let me put on some pants and we can talk about it.”

“I can’t.” Louis told him.

Harry’s heart began to ache, he couldn’t let Louis go so easily, he reached out for his arm and grasped it tightly.

“No, no.” He hummed, “It’s not going to happen. I know you think it’ll work but it’s not the same.”

Harry froze, “What’s not the same?”

“You’re touch.” He said, peeling himself from Harry’s grasp. “You have to be touching the Louis from your time for you to be able to find me easier through the different worlds. That didn’t work.”

Harry stopped breathing, he lowered his voice as if he didn’t want anyone to hear, but there was no one else around. He leaned out the window and crouched his head as if scared. “Do you know what this is?”

Louis looked at him sadly and lowered his voice just as quietly, “Not really.”

Harry licked his lips hesitantly and it was the only thing that kept Louis there those few seconds longer. Harry whispered again, “Does this scare you?”

Louis sighed, keeping his low voice, “I can’t stay much longer, I’m not meant to be here. This isn’t my time.”

Harry’s face fell, noticeably, and he stood there helplessly as Louis took a few steps to the left where a weird looking craft sat resting against the side of his house.

“What is that?”

Louis smiled mischievously over his shoulder before answering, “You’ll find out soon enough.” He climbed in it and shut the front of it, Harry couldn’t see him anymore and it pained his heart more than anything. The machine hummed to life and with a blink of an eye, it was gone.

Harry closed his window and sat back down in his bed, he stared at the journal that sat at his dresser. He was confused and frustrated and he didn’t know what was going on, he felt like he was being used like a toy. Not wanting to think about it, Harry curled himself into his sheets, his sore muscles now on his mind again. They hadn’t been in the excitement of seeing Louis, but now it was all he could think about. Then, Harry did what he always did when he didn’t want to face the problem set in front of him, he dreamed.

 

•••

 

The monster that had risen from the river was dripping wet, and standing in front of Louis. His shoulders were big and broad, but he was shivering and he looked lanky as he tried curling in on himself for warmth.

“Who the hell are you?” Louis snapped. He was frustrated and cold, but mostly confused.

“I’m Harry.” He smiled. “You’re in your boxers so we’re even. Now put your clothes back on.”

Louis went to dress himself again though not because Harry had told him to, but because he was cold. “What do you mean we’re even, I don’t know you! How did you find me? Do you have any fucking idea what this is? Why don’t you just let me bloody die!” He screeched in frustration.

Harry gave him a look. “Do it.”

“Do what?”

“Do it. Kill yourself. Dive head first in to the freezing water and swim so deep you can’t come back up. Do it.” Harry repeated.

Louis stood there with his sweatpants balled up in his hand and he squeezed it in his palms. His buzz from all the alcohol and drugs he had taken was wearing away rather quickly. The adrenaline he was feeling earlier was gone, he couldn’t explain it, but suicide just didn’t look as desirable.

“You don’t know who I am, do you?” Harry asked.

Louis shook his head, “Who the hell are you? Besides _Harry.”_

Harry sighed, he wasn’t sure how to answer that, he only knew what he was supposed to say, but not necessarily what he should say. “I was sent from the future.” Harry reached in his inside coat pocket and pulled out the thick journal that was in a plastic Ziploc bag to be salvaged from the water. “Now can we please go somewhere dry so we can talk about this?” Harry’s teeth were chattering.

Louis was pulling on his shirt when he froze. “ _You._ ” He scowled, “It’s you! You’re the one who left that stupid note book. Who the hell do you think you are?” He barked, furious.

Harry stood there quietly as if he were used to this.

“Answer me!” Louis snapped.

Harry sighed. “Do you remember that space pod you were supposed to build?”

Louis refused to say anything, afraid to think of that again, afraid to trigger his overworked brain.

“You build that in about four months, and I just parked it in the water. I am not from your time, but I am here for a reason.”

Louis tugged on his jacket, finally, and was looking for his shoes. “Bull. Shit. You can’t keep messing with me like this!” Louis snarled again, “Who gave you the right?”

Harry looked sadly over at Louis and lowered his voice very quietly, “There’s something bigger than you and I. Something bigger than this universe. I don’t know what it is but you and I both know this mess must be worth saving it from whatever trouble has happened.

“Why us?” He snapped. “It can’t be me, you don’t–“

“Don’t what?” Harry said suddenly raising his voice, “I don’t understand?”

“You don’t!” Louis yelled back, “You don’t know what I am! What I’ve gone through or what I know.”

Harry wanted to shove him back to shut him up but he knew better than to aggravate him. “I know you’re a genius that shouldn’t exist.” Harry said through gritted teeth. “I know you’re purposefully fighting this, you _know_ this, you understand it, and you’re just being an ass!”Harry retorted. “I also know that May 2015 something is going to change and you’re going to build that stupid space pod.” Harry said pointing at the water, “And I know you’re scared.” He said finally, “I am too.”

Louis didn’t say anything, he was cold, but that didn’t compare to the chills he got just then. “What makes you so special? Why us?” He retorted.

Harry took a small step forward, “I should exist either.”

“Then why _do_ we exist! I don’t understand and I don’t want to understand!” Louis screamed louder so he could hide his oncoming tears. “I want to be normal! I want to be happy! I don’t want to know how you could possibly have something I obviously haven’t built yet. You say it’s in four months but that hasn’t happened yet. I don’t want to believe you, so just leave me alone! There is nothing bigger than the universe. You are out of your fucking mind, so just _stop_.” Louis voice cracked, “ _Please._ ”

“Look, we’re in this boat together.” Harry said calmly. “I can’t stop it, because you’re in this just as much as I am. Your future self is doing this just as much as I am. You can’t stop yourself from the past like that.” Louis whined and Harry kept talking. “You know very well the past present and future are all happening right now. You can feel yourself being born _right now_ and you can feel the significance in that and-”

“How do you know that?” Louis snapped.

“Because you told me.” Harry said. Louis stared at him. “A different Louis from a different time told me. You eventually trust me, isn’t that enough to trust me now?” Louis still didn’t say anything. “Look, you’re going to make that space craft in four months and you’re going to make it waterproof so that when I go back inside, I can flush out all of the water and get dry.”

Louis scrunched his nose, “Did it not do that before?”

“No.”

“And telling me now is going to fix it?” He looked amused.

“Do you know what the multiverse theory is?” Harry asked suddenly.

“Does it matter?”

Harry took a step closer. “Do you believe in fate?”

“Does. It. Matter?”

“Would you like to travel?”

“What does it matter!”

“It matters because you matter, Louis. Do you trust me?”

“I–“

 

•••

 

_The tears in his eyes were there involuntarily gathering at the ends of his eyes as he ran. He tried blinking them back but the swelling emotion pumping through his veins were pushing them over the brink, and as much as he told himself not to cry, those tears were the farthest thing from his mind. Louis’ coat was flapping with the wind and for a second he felt like he was flying like one of the superheroes in his comics. He did feel like a hero in that instant, running at the last second to save the one that he loved. He only hoped he could make it in time._

_The bowtie was bothering him and his suspenders weren’t helping his dynamics either, but still, Louis ran and ran down the streets of London where he knew Harry would be in his little radio station playing his favorite role of host. People stared as Louis sprinted, he could only imagine what his fiancée was thinking, the one he left at the altar. Maybe it should have pained Louis to leave at that very last second before saying ‘I do’, maybe he should feel sorry for abandoning his family like that, but not sorry enough to stay there and ruin him and his fiancée’s life. Mark was abusive anyway, and Harry had suspected it from the start, he said he wouldn’t do anything to force Louis out of it, but he wouldn’t come to the wedding either. Harry even offered to take Louis away, and Louis should have seen before that he was a guardian angel sent by heaven, but he was ignorant then._

_“Move out of my way! I need to see Harry!” He screeched at the people at the front desk. They didn’t even bother trying to restrain him, they just sat there dumbfounded. Louis pushed through the doors and hallways he was familiar with, because Harry had taken him down there on occasion even though he wasn’t supposed to. Louis burst through the doors with tears streaming down his face and his cheeks a crimson red from both the run and the overflow of emotion._

_“Lou!” Harry called. He was behind the recording glass and he quickly fiddled with the switches before leaving the room to get to Louis’ side._

_Louis wasted no time in throwing himself at Harry. “Harry! Harry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.” He hiccupped through tears. “You’re right, you were right. I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” He fell so hard against Harry that they were both pushed up against the wall. Louis’ leg was wrapping around Harry now, he was so scared that Mark would come up from behind and rip them apart. “I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t.” His fingers had twisted their way under Harry’s beanie and dug into his hair, his runny nose was pressed against Harry’s shoulder and he was shaking from his restrained cries._

_“Sh, sh.” Harry soothed. “It’s okay, baby. I’ve got you now, he can’t hurt you.” Harry clung to Louis just as tightly and he felt himself choking up too._

_“I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”_

_“You don’t have to be sorry, he should feel sorry for hurting you so much.” Harry whispered._

_They stood there with the sound of Louis’ cries filling the air._

_“Did you just come back from the wedding?” Harry asked him._

_Louis pulled back to look at Harry and he wiped his face to the best of his ability. “Yes.” His voice quivered. “I looked into his eyes and the only thing I could think was that I wish you were standing there instead of him.” He choked out. “Harry, I love you.” He cried even harder, he couldn’t imagine Harry loving him back, not with everything he’s had to put up with from Louis._

_Harry didn’t say anything, he only kissed Louis hard on the mouth. It was the first time they had done it since they broke up years ago._

_“Harry, I’ve always loved you.” Louis croaked when Harry pulled back._

_“It’s okay, baby.” He smiled, tears in his eyes, “I love you too.”_

_They kissed again, but it was softer and they held each other’s faces gently, Louis to stop his fingers from shaking and Harry to keep Louis from shaking._

_“Do you want to get out of here?” Harry whispered when they stood there with their foreheads pressed together._

_“I do.” He laughed, “I do.”_

 

“Good lord.” His sister huffed. “I come by to visit and you’re sleeping in the middle day half naked. You haven’t changed at all.” She shook her head.

Harry moved to get up but his muscles protested with an ache. “Bugger off.” He retorted.

“Dinner will be ready soon!” She sang. “It’d be nice to catch up with my baby brother.”

“Fuck off.” He repeated.

“You haven’t changed.” She laughed, and it was the last thing she said before closing the door.

Harry moaned and groaned, and he may have been over exaggerating but he had just woken up from a _wonderful_ dream and he didn’t want to deal with anything. He got in the shower and hoped the hot steam would loosen his muscles up, he wasn’t going to try that again in a while. Harry stood in the shower and thought about his dream. He wished Louis would run through the city for him, he wished he could kiss Louis and care for him or at least be able to hold him. It made his heart ache and he tried ignoring it, but his feelings were always over sensitive.

Once dried and changed, Harry tiptoed his way to the journal where the signature pink sticky note was sticking out and he cautiously opened it to begin reading before going to dinner.

 

_Harry_

_I need you to get out your own version of your notebook and start jotting down everything that’s happened. On the very last page, write down what you can remember from that first day you saw your future self talking to you, and write it in a pink colored pencil._

_That’s only one of the things you need to do. You also need to go back to 4:53pm on the 15 th of July in 2004. Go to Doncaster, in a little beige cottage with a brick red roof that’s just North of the intersection along Winsor Lane and Naval Street, you can’t miss it. In fact you’ll feel drawn to it._

_You’ll find two little girls playing out in the yard without any supervision. You need to appear, strike one of the girls, and disappear again. It sounds wrong I know, but it needs to happen. It might help to mention Louis is was about to kill himself in that instant and his little sisters’ scream is the only thing that would keep him alive. You need to be brave and face this head on. Write this down it might help._

_I also need you to go back to 2:43pm to February 10 th1998 and this one is going to be easier because all you need it so push your hand through. There will be a woman cutting tomatoes for a dinner and you need to give her nudge so that she cuts her finger deep enough for her to yell._

_I know you won’t want to but I promise you, Louis is about to kill himself here too and that is the only thing that’s stopping him. It doesn’t matter which order you take this, but I advise the latter going first because it’ll be easier and because I know how much it hurts when you travel. Take it easy kid. Louis was most likely the one to deliver this to you, because I’m not allowed to. It would make a mess of things: standing in front of each other in person. I can’t imagine what you were thinking when you saw him, but I promise you, your time will come. Finish these accomplishments and the list will grow shorter and we’ll be nearing the end and you can have him all to yourself. Be careful, don’t poke and prod._

_Sign,_

_Your future self_

 

Harry figured it out quickly in his head and realized Louis must have tried killing himself when he was only around ten years old. He didn’t know what to think.


End file.
